Hey veterans, Travis Studdard, Veterans Disability Attorney.
I want to talk to you, again, about your individual, unemployability claim and to follow up on
a recent video I did concerning Nexus in your VA claim for TDIU benefits.
In that, when I was saying you had to have a Nexus or a link between your service connected
disability and your inability to find work.
Now, what I want to discuss with you is showing that link or that Nexus as strong as your
possibly can.
Here's how you go about that.
The first step in that is to assess the full picture of your disabilities that are already
service connected.
Here's what I mean by that.
If you have, let's say, four separate service connected disabilities, I want you to get
out a piece of paper and I want you to write out each one on a separate page.
After you do that, I want you start listing out the symptoms of that particular disability;
how it affects your body.
I, also, want you to list out the limitations of that disability.
Again, a symptom and a limitation can be a little different.
For instance, if you have a back injury, a symptom would be back pain.
It causes pain in your lower back region, let's say.
A limitation would be your inability to bend or have limited range of motion.
I want you list out every symptom, every limitation for each one of those service connected disabilities.
Then, at that point, you have to get evidence for those.
We'll talk about that in a minute.
As you go through this, I want you to think about, again, how they affect you throughout
your life.
From the time you wake up in the morning, you have trouble getting out of bed due to
your back.
Is your back stiff when you wake up?
Do you have ... Once you get up and you're getting dressed, do you have problems tying
your shoes?
Do you have problems taking out the garbage?
Do you have problems lifting things?
Do you have problems twisting and bending?
All of these, again, this is just an example with a back injury, a back disability.
Go through your entire day, entire week, entire month, because again, every day's not the
same.
Think about how it affects you.
In the summer time, you may have yard work that you struggle to do, whereas in the winter
you may not.
List out all of that information.
That's going to give the full picture of those disabilities and it's going to strengthen
that Nexus because again, these are already service connected disabilities.
We want to show to the VA that these are, in fact, limiting you, limiting you in your
daily life, which would of course limit you in your professional life as well.
If there's a particular job that you've done in the past, again, why can't you do that
job now?
Is it because you have to bend?
Is it because you have to lift a lot of weight?
Is it because you have to sit for eight hours at a time?
All of those things are things to consider.
Then, later on, we'll get to how you establish those facts to prove your VA TDIU claim.
Again, you need to be focused on those that are service connected, and the symptoms, and
the limitations for those.
Hope that makes sense and helps you in your quest for VA TDIU benefits.
If it does, like this video, check out our others on individual, unemployability and
other topics and hope to see you next time.
Thanks for watching.